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Jan Oberhauser e1797f8d30 📚 Add information about hosted n8n
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n8n - Workflow Automation Tool

n8n.io - Workflow Automation

n8n is a free node-based "Open Source" (with Commons Clause) Workflow Automation Tool. It can be self-hosted, easily extended, and so also used with internal tools.

n8n.io - Screenshot

Is still in beta so can not guarantee that everything works perfectly. Also is there currently not much documentation. That will hopefully change soon.

Demo

A short demo (< 3 min) which shows how to create a simple workflow which automatically sends a new Slack notification every time a Github repository received or lost a star:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePdcf0yaz1c

Give n8n a spin

To simply spin up n8n to have a look and give it spin you can simply run:

npx n8n

It will then download everything which is needed and start n8n.

You can then access n8n by opening: http://localhost:5678

Installation

To fully install n8n globally execute:

npm install n8n -g

Start

After the installation n8n can be started by simply typing in:

n8n
# or
n8n start

Start with tunnel

To be able to use webhooks which all triggers of external services like Github rely on n8n has to be reachable from the web. To make that easy n8n has a special tunnel service which redirects requests from our servers to your local n8n instance.

To use it simply start n8n with --tunnel

n8n start --tunnel

Securing n8n

By default, n8n can be accessed by everybody. This is OK if you have it only running locally buy if you deploy it on a server which is accessible from the web you have to make sure that n8n is protected! Right now we have very basic protection via basic-auth in place. It can be activated by setting the following environment variables:

N8N_BASIC_AUTH_ACTIVE=true
N8N_BASIC_AUTH_USER=<USER>
N8N_BASIC_AUTH_PASSWORD=<PASSWORD>

Start with other Database

By default, n8n uses SQLite to save credentials, past executions and workflows. n8n however also supports MongoDB and PostgresDB. To use them simply a few environment variables have to be set.

Start with MongoDB as Database

To use MongoDB as database you can provide the following environment variables like in the example bellow:

  • DB_TYPE=mongodb
  • DB_MONGODB_CONNECTION_URL=<CONNECTION_URL>

Replace the following placeholders with the actual data:

  • MONGO_DATABASE
  • MONGO_HOST
  • MONGO_PORT
  • MONGO_USER
  • MONGO_PASSWORD
export DB_TYPE=mongodb
export DB_MONGODB_CONNECTION_URL=mongodb://MONGO_USER:MONGO_PASSWORD@MONGO_HOST:MONGO_PORT/MONGO_DATABASE
n8n start

Start with PostgresDB as Database

To use PostgresDB as database you can provide the following environment variables

  • DB_TYPE=postgresdb
  • DB_POSTGRESDB_DATABASE (default: 'n8n')
  • DB_POSTGRESDB_HOST (default: 'localhost')
  • DB_POSTGRESDB_PORT (default: 5432)
  • DB_POSTGRESDB_USER (default: 'root')
  • DB_POSTGRESDB_PASSWORD (default: empty)
export DB_TYPE=postgresdb
export DB_POSTGRESDB_DATABASE=n8n
export DB_POSTGRESDB_HOST=postgresdb
export DB_POSTGRESDB_PORT=5432
export DB_POSTGRESDB_USER=n8n
export DB_POSTGRESDB_PASSWORD=n8n

n8n start

Passing Sensitive Data via File

To avoid passing sensitive information via environment variables "_FILE" may be appended to some environment variables. It will then load the data from a file with the given name. That makes it possible to load data easily from Docker- and Kubernetes-Secrets.

The following environment variables support file input:

  • DB_MONGODB_CONNECTION_URL
  • DB_POSTGRESDB_DATABASE_FILE
  • DB_POSTGRESDB_HOST_FILE
  • DB_POSTGRESDB_PASSWORD_FILE
  • DB_POSTGRESDB_PORT_FILE
  • DB_POSTGRESDB_USER_FILE
  • N8N_BASIC_AUTH_PASSWORD_FILE
  • N8N_BASIC_AUTH_USER_FILE

Execute Workflow from CLI

Workflows can not just be started by triggers, webhooks or manually via the Editor it is also possible to execute them directly via the CLI.

Execute a saved workflow by its ID:

n8n execute --id <ID>

Execute a workflow from a workflow file:

n8n execute --file <WORKFLOW_FILE>

Create Custom Nodes

It is very easy to create own nodes for n8n. More information about that can be found in the documentation of "n8n-node-dev" which is a small CLI which helps with n8n-node-development.

To n8n-node-dev

Keyboard Shortcuts

The following keyboard shortcuts can currently be used:

General

  • Ctrl + a: Select all nodes
  • Ctrl + Alt + n: Create new workflow
  • Ctrl + o: Open workflow
  • Ctrl + s: Save the current workflow
  • Ctrl + v: Paste nodes
  • Tab: Open "Node Creator". Type to filter and navigate with arrow keys. To create press "enter"

With node/s selected

  • ArrowDown: Select sibling node bellow the current one
  • ArrowLeft: Select node left of the current one
  • ArrowRight: Select node right of the current one
  • ArrowUp: Select sibling node above the current one
  • Ctrl + c: Copy nodes
  • Ctrl + x: Cut nodes
  • d: Deactivate nodes
  • Delete: Delete nodes
  • F2: Rename node
  • Shift + ArrowLeft: Select all nodes left of the current one
  • Shift + ArrowRight: Select all nodes right of the current one

Run n8n on own server

To run n8n on your webserver with own domain some environment variables should be set to the appropriate values.

A possible configuration to run n8n on https://n8n.example.com/ would look like this:

N8N_HOST: "n8n.example.com"
N8N_PROTOCOL: "https"
N8N_PORT: "443"
VUE_APP_URL_BASE_API: "https://n8n.example.com/"

Important: Make sure that you secure your n8n instance like described above in "Securing n8n"!

Additional Configuration

It is possible to change some of the n8n defaults via special environment variables. The ones that currently exist are:

EXECUTIONS_DATA_SAVE_MANUAL_EXECUTIONS

Normally executions which got started via the Editor UI will not be saved as they are normally only for testing and debugging. That default can be changed with this environment variable.

EXECUTIONS_DATA_SAVE_MANUAL_EXECUTIONS=true

This setting can also be overwritten on a per workflow basis in the workflow settings in the Editor UI.

EXECUTIONS_DATA_SAVE_ON_ERROR / EXECUTIONS_DATA_SAVE_ON_SUCCESS

When a workflow gets executed it will save the result in the database. That is the case for executions that did succeed and for the ones that failed. That default behavior can be changed like this:

EXECUTIONS_DATA_SAVE_ON_ERROR=true
EXECUTIONS_DATA_SAVE_ON_SUCCESS=false

These settings can also be overwritten on a per workflow basis in the workflow settings in the Editor UI.

GENERIC_TIMEZONE

The timezone is set by default to "America/New_York". It gets for example used by the Cron-Node to know at what time the workflow should be started at. To set a different default timezone simply set GENERIC_TIMEZONE to the appropriate value like for example for Berlin (Germany):

GENERIC_TIMEZONE="Europe/Berlin"

You can find the name of your timezone here: https://momentjs.com/timezone/

NODES_EXCLUDE

It is possible to not allow users to use nodes of a specific node type. If you, for example, do not want that people can write data to disk with the "n8n-nodes-base.writeBinaryFile" node and can not execute commands with the "n8n-nodes-base.executeCommand" node you can set the following:

NODES_EXCLUDE="[\"n8n-nodes-base.executeCommand\",\"n8n-nodes-base.writeBinaryFile\"]"

Hosted n8n

If you are interested in a hosted version of n8n on our infrastructure please contact us via: hosting@n8n.io

License

Apache 2.0 with Commons Clause

Development

When developing n8n can be started with npm run start:dev. It will then automatically restart n8n every time a file changes.